After meeting some of the guys on the easter social ride i thought i would tag along this morning on the 6am ride with the fast bunch. I awoke bleary eyed with the alarm chirping away like a strangulated canary, got dressed, managed to get a few slurps of coffee down the neck and then set off to the gathering point.

Got there with a few minutes to spare (its not that far from my place just over the top of a small hill and down to the ambulance station) met a few new folks and the 9 of us set off at a brisk 30kph from bracken ridge towards strathpine for the first leg.

The route goes bracken ridge, strathpine, kallangur, rothwell then down anzac avenue to kippa ring, head north to scarborough then through redcliffe to woody point, then along clontarf over the bridge and back to brighton. I'm not sure how long it is (i forgot to reset the bike computer from yesterdays city ride, kicking myself atm cause it would have been interesting to see the stats of the ride) but the guys were saying its about 50klm.

It was a bit of a weird ride , i did not know what to expect really but i thought it would be more of a peloton ride with us all riding as a bunch. I had no worries keeping up and all was going well till the first set of 3 stop lights where we top a overpass. The lights go yellow as we are getting close and we all slow to a stop but one of the guys decides to run the red light and off he goes! by the time the rest of us are through the lights hes 2k down the road. I look across at Jeff one of the guys i've just met and he nods back so off we go to catch him, we take turns at the front averaging 35-40kph and things are pretty well in hand as we catch him up. It was an effort but i was pleased about it.

This turned out to be what the rest of the ride was like with the same guy running light after light and three of us doing some hard riding to catch Mr redlight , we had dropped the other 5 guys who had probably seen this all before and decided to do their own thing.

There are a couple of very steep climbs around kallangur which are bloody hard work as my power to weight ratio still sucks, ofcourse i got dropped off the back of the group on both but managed to catchup a few k's down the road.

We turned off onto highway 71 for the long stretch down towards kippa ring and we settled into +-30kph, by this time i had recovered enough to take a turn up the front and picked up the pace to 35kph. I was totally gobsmakked when after a few minutes i hear Mr redlight yell out at me and bitch about the fact i did not point out a road repair!! grrr the bloody cheek of this guy! the more i thought about it the more pissed off i got and it took the shine off what would have been a excellent morning.

Anyhow now that i'm at home had a cuppa and the Endorphins have kicked in, im feeling pretty chuffed about the ride and being able to keep up. As for Mr redlight, he doesn't know it, but he has given me some serious motivation for this weeks training rides...

I took a peek at your post MountGower and it sounds very tempting! the regular guys i ride with twice a week have been slacking off since the easter weekend. Yesterday was the first ride since then and they were out of form. Hows your Sundays?

You have a tolerant group if they're going to put up with the red light runner.

Our fast group (of about 30) are all club members and anyone doing that and giving cyclist and in particular, club members, a bad reputation what soon be told to cut it out.

I was totally gobsmakked when after a few minutes i hear Mr redlight yell out at me and bitch about the fact i did not point out a road repair!! grrr the bloody cheek of this guy! the more i thought about it the more pissed off i got and it took the shine off what would have been a excellent morning.

Perhaps he didn't see the red lights because you didn't point them out to him

Fast group rides may be hard but they are fun and addictive and shortly after finishing I one I'm hanging out for the next one.

tuco wrote:Perhaps he didn't see the red lights because you didn't point them out to him

Yea i'm already looking forward to next sunday Tuco, like i was saying he doesn't know it but hes given me some serious motivation

Ive got a polar cs200cad winging its way to aussie sometime this week, when it arrives i'm going to get into some structured training. Do you find the software and their website program very helpful?

Ive been scouting around for a club to join and i'm seriously considering the Hamilton Pine River Wheelers (what a mouthful) , i just need to loose some more flab and increase my performance lvls before ill commit.

Imanewbie wrote:Ive got a polar cs200cad winging its way to aussie sometime this week, when it arrives i'm going to get into some structured training. Do you find the software and their website program very helpful?

I don't have a cs200cad. I log my ride data, both kms/time and heart rate data, into a spreadsheet. It's showing up some interesting treads.

tuco wrote:I don't have a cs200cad. I log my ride data, both kms/time and heart rate data, into a spreadsheet. It's showing up some interesting treads.

My bad mate, i always find the info you post about your rides really informative and just assumed .

I juggled with the idea of getting a hrm and using that in conjunction with the current bike comp and probably would have gone that route if i had not seen threads about getting the polars cheaper from fleabay. I guess what swayed my decision the most after the good things i see written about them here , is the bundled software and its ease of use (i don't know the first thing about spreadsheets). But then i have seen enough software that falls short or is just clunky to use, so i was hoping for some feedback

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